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“A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.”

-Aldous Huxley

I’ve been trying to finish the same book since the first week of classes, which has been an eternity. I’m ashamed to look at it, its spine arched back in a dance of memory preservation; my three-quarters-of-the-way-through spot saved by slow ruining of the physical copy. And it’s not a classic or a modern piece of geniu: it’s Star Wars: Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, a piece of cheap science fiction that I picked up at the bookstore, triumphantly carting around proof of my self-described-quirky tendencies.

But I have lost interest, to say the least. The words that used to give me so much joy, as I would plow through endless volumes of space battles and choppy tech jargon, now only invite criticism. I am continuously assessing the usage of this adjective or that paragraph break, finding nothing but personal vendettas against Matthew Stover’s writing style and dry treatment of the characters that I once knew like the proverbial back of my hand.

Like with any book that I have grown tired of, I find myself skimming the surface of the pages, jumping over entire bodies of words, racing myself to the end of the novel so I can contently put it in my bookshelf and never look at it again, so I can start a new book, a new chapter in my life.

I still have seventy-eight pages left. It’s time to read faster.